July 16, 2007

“A good war comic is the same as a good police comic or detective comic. It’s about the good guys and how tough it can be to be a good guy. It’s about the belief that the good guys always win. The going may get tight and the going may get tough, but hands down the good guys win in the end. How they win, how they almost lose, how they dig down deep for the needed fortitude to make it through, how some of them get wounded and some of them die, that’s all part of the package. Unfortunately it’s very easy to switch sides as Dr. Wertham pointed out, when police comics and detective comics become crime comics, glorifications of criminals and war comics flip over from interesting stories about soldiers into thinly-veiled racist sadomasochism.”*